“The history of arithmetic and algebra illustrates one of the striking and curious features of the history of mathematics. Ideas that seem remarkably simple once explained were thousands of years in the making.”

— Morris Kline

Morris Kline, p.22.
Mathematics for the Nonmathematician (1967)

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Morris Kline 42

American mathematician 1908–1992

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“The unnaturalness of mathematical symbolism is attested to by history. The algebra of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Arabs was what is commonly called rhetorical algebra. …on the whole they used ordinary rhetoric to describe their mathematical work. Symbolism is a relatively modern invention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…”

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“It is true that in recent years a number of attractive histories of mathematics have been published in England and America, but these have only dealt with Greek mathematics as part of the larger subject, and in consequence the writers have been precluded… from presenting the work of the Greeks in suflicient detail. The same remark applies to the German histories of mathematics, even to the great work of Moritz Cantor…”

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“The history of arithmetic and algebra illustrates one of the striking and curious features of the history of mathematics. Ideas that seem remarkably simple once explained were thousands of years in the making.”

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